December 4, 2017
Last year the Kingaroy Girl Guides painted a new name on their Junior BP Award honour board – the first one they’d added to it in the past ten years.
This year, though, they’ll be breaking all records with nine additional names, the biggest single year roll-up the troop has ever seen since they first put up the honour board in the late 1970s and added the first pair of names to it in 1999.
The board records Kingaroy Girl Guides who’ve won the Junior BP Award, named in honour of Girl Guides founder Robert Baden-Powell because it is Guiding’s highest honour.
Last year a Junior BP Award was won by 12-year-old Kingaroy State High School student Jade May, who put in almost a year’s effort to win the rare honour.
The previous recipient (L. Jacobsen) won a Junior BP Award in 2006, and in the seven years before that only two other names were recorded: A. Shephard and S. Jamieson.
But this year – inspired by Jade’s 2016 effort – nine other guides earned the prestigious award, along with the right to have their names inscribed on the honour board, too.
The 2017 award-winners were Emma-Lee Cohen, Hannah Frohloff, Megan Frohloff, Savanah Reed, Lillian Davey, Laura Davey, Veronica May, Rebekah Stone and Tallyn Broderick.
Amanda May, who has been the Kingaroy troop’s leader for the past 18 years, said she was extremely proud of the girls.
At the time of last year’s presentation, five other girls were following in Jade’s footsteps and were part-way towards gaining a Junior BP award in their own right.
Another four joined the quest for the award when the troop resumed this year.
“They were so keen to finish before this year’s awards ceremony that some of them called me up on a weekend to see if they could come around to my home to finish some tasks,” Amanda said.
“When you’re faced with so much enthusiasm, you really can’t say no.”
The troop’s annual award night was held at their Mant Street headquarters last week, where 140 individual awards were presented to troop members for their accomplishments during the year.
Long-time assistant troop leader Laurel John also won an award for five years of service to the group.
Afterwards, Guides and their proud parents mingled over a late afternoon tea.
The awards ceremony was the troop’s last official activity for the year – they’ll now go into recess until February.
- Related article: Guide Earns Rare Honour
